


When You Smile, I Fall Apart

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Bohun is a hot mess but isn't he always, F/M, Family Fluff, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Insecurity, Loving Marriage, M/M, Multi, Newborn Children, OT3, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22168432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: None of them had ever believed that their family would be like other families. They had never known of families like theirs. They had never heard of families like theirs.And perhaps Bohun hadn't even realised he was their family. Not until now.
Relationships: Helena Kurcewiczówna/Jan Skrzetuski, Jurko Bohun/Helena Kurcewiczówna, Jurko Bohun/Jan Skrzetuski
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	When You Smile, I Fall Apart

Surely, _surely_ it would all be well, but neither man dared to be certain of it. Each saw the helpless fear in the other’s eyes.

“The women here have always known what to do,” Jan said. But he pulled Bohun to him with hands that shook, fingers digging into Bohun’s back. 

“I’ll go to the village,” Bohun said with sudden decision. “I’ll—I’ll get the midwife—will there be time?”

“Yes, yes,” Jan said. He drew in a breath that set military steel to his spine. Bohun didn’t like being told what to do, but now he needed Jan to _know_ what should be done so that Bohun might do it. “If we have such need of the midwife, it will be better for her to already be on her way. If anything goes wrong, we’d—”

Bohun’s arms tightened with reflexive terror, cutting off Jan’s words. The oldest suspicion of all wrung his heart: the fear that naming calls. 

“I’ll go at once!” Bohun cried. But instead of leaving, he wheeled back to the room they had both left, shoving the door open and entering like a whirlwind.

The women turned to him with the disdain of soldiers seeing panicked civilians on the eve of battle. No one told him to get out, but the their eyes did not make him welcome. Pan Skrzetuski had been here for the birth of Jaremka and of Longinek. But even if Jurko Bohun was accepted as having a certain _place_ in the household, he was an uncertain factor in this moment. A reputation as a Cossack hero was worthless in this room.

Bohun ignored them, stumbling to Helena’s bedside. 

She was pale, but she reached out to take his hand.

“I’m going to get the midwife,” he told her, kneeling and pressing her hand to his lips.

“In the middle of the night? And with the snow so deep? I—” She paused, feeling his hand trembling as it held her own. “Thank you, Jurko.”

“I love you,” Bohun whimpered, leaning his head against her side, unashamed of the tears sliding down his cheeks. 

“I know. I love you, too. Hush now, my falcon. I’ll be fine. You’ll need to be brave for me.”

He knew those were the same words she told her children, but he clung to the comfort they offered even as he clung to her hand.

“And if it’s anything like it was with the boys, then these first little convulsions are only so I can be all ready and settled in my own bed before it begins. You should thank the Blessed Virgin on my behalf that it is not nearly so bad with me as it is for other women. You’ll certainly get to the village and back in time.”

“I will?”

“Yes, Jurko,” she said. “And I will be fine.”

“Oh. Then—I’ll be back!” he said, rising, committing her to memory as he did so, in case… 

_There will be blood, and screaming. God, oh God, I never thought I would hear her scream again._

Bohun kissed her on the lips and on the brow.

“God watch over you, until my return,” he whispered. Then he fled.

  
  


His men caught their _ataman_ ’s mood from the moment he threw open the door to their quarters. They cast anxious looks at him, staring as they tumbled from their beds and donned furs and buckled on sabres.

“What’s happening?” they asked him. “What’s the trouble? Tell us, _bat’ko_!”

“We’re riding to the village!”

“But why, _bat’ko_? In the middle of the night?”

“To get the midwife!” he screamed.

That got them moving as no shouts or curses could have. They readied themselves without the usual merry grumbling and joking. Hands flew, men crossing themselves once, twice, thrice. The only sounds were the drumming of boots on planks, the jingling of swordbelts, and the whispering of prayers.

  
  


Bohun clutched a torch high in one gloved hand as he turned his horse’s head to the gate. Looking back to the house he saw servants peering out with two little figures between them: Jaremka and Longinek. 

“Don’t worry, my darlings!” he called to them, fighting to keep the fear from his voice, as he’d never had to before. “I’m only going to get the midwife, my little ones! I’ll be back soon!” 

As Bohun wheeled his horse round into the night, he knew a moment of harrowing cowardice: he was glad to be riding away rather than having to stay and pretend bravery he did not feel for the boys’ sake.

_At least they will have have known her name. They will have known she loved them._

He struck at his horse’s side with his whip as if pain and terror were something he could outrun. 

_God, protect her! Oh, save her, please, Lord! I should have died a hundred times, so don’t let me live when she is the one deserving of life! Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us! Her boys need her; Jan needs her; I need her, too, dear Lord, and you know she’s been all I wanted for so many years!_

Bohun knew he was the stranger among his loves. They showered him with love, showing their love in everything they did. Bohun had striven so hard to grasp things which should have been beyond his reach that he should not allow himself be ungrateful when this one, most precious dream had come true. But discontentment had long ago seared itself into his bones. Sometimes it was _hard_ to forget that no bonds of marriage joined him to those he adored. Sometimes he was jealous of one, or of the other, or of both. And he was ashamed of it. He tried not to be unworthy of them, but he failed so often. 

If something went wrong, it could not be Jan’s fault. It could not be Helena’s. Happiness had never shattered at their touch. 

His eyes watered in the winter cold, and he bent down in the saddle, hunching out of the wind. The horse’s steaming breath blew back across him, freezing to crusted ice on the fur of his clothes. Bohun tried to make his breathing match his mount’s. He bound the cadence of his repeated prayers to the rhythm of his horse’s hoofbeats. Yet his unruly soul shrieked its terror to Heaven like a damned soul in the night.

When they reached the village, whatever the midwife saw in his face made her run in pale-faced panic through the house long before he even opened his mouth. Yet soon Bohun was screaming, promising riches and promising death, whatever would lash the woman to greater speed as she gathered her herbs and charms. Though she ran, she was not to be cowed. When she snarled at Bohun to help her gather her things, he wept with gratitude to have _something_ to do rather than endure another moment of helpless inanition.

Now every minute was one delaying the aid the midwife could bring. Every passing second might be one in which Helena was in pain because Bohun was too slow, because he had never been worthy of her, because he had wanted not to be alone but had always burned the world down even though he’d only ever wanted a fire to keep warm by.

Rozłogi’s lights blurred before his eyes as he finally picked out its lights, twinkling in the frosty night. He had not known that fear could make him weep, but frozen rivulets clung to his cheeks, and fallen tears spangled his clothes like the icy stars above. 

The midwife damned him for a madman as he leapt from the saddle and dragged her bodily after him. Yet she wisely did not resist, keeping a white-knuckled hold on the sack which held the tools of her trade.

Bohun bowled into the warmth of the house, scattering a wake of snow as he pounded towards Helena’s bedroom. 

“What’s happening?” he shouted at the servants, not stopping to hear their replies.

What stopped him was the door: closed, with no sound from within. Golden light showed beneath, gilding the snow he’d trailed in as it melted.

“Why can’t I hear anything?” he whispered to the midwife. He felt _everything_ in that moment, as though the universe were an assault on his senses. Silence pummeled his ears. The sweating heat of his own body was a molten cage. His clothes were a scratching, leaden burden on his skin. When the midwife pushed free of him he recoiled from the touch of her hand. 

“Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?” she said, exasperated.

With the sluggish clarity of nightmare, he saw her raise her hand and knock at the door. Three sharp knocks. For all Bohun knew they were the death knells of his joy.

“Come in,” a voice said. Weary, hoarse, but—

The wood was warm under his shaking hand, and the door no heavier than it had been when he left. Yet he could hardly be sure he himself had opened it as it swung open before him.

The room smelled of sweat and blood. It scented of burning juniper and lavender, thrown among the crackling logs to make the air sweet. The household women were still tidying away basins and linen that reeked of the battlefield. 

“Jurko, you’re too late,” Helena said softly. Her hair had not yet been replaited; loose strands straggled over her still-damp cheek. She looked exhausted. But she held a miracle in her arms.

 _“Helena,”_ he whispered.

Jan rose from Helena’s side, helping to pull the sodden cloak from Bohun’s unresisting body and to pluck the gloves from Bohun’s nerveless fingers. 

Jaremka and Longinek watched, silent and wide-eyed as owls, from their mother’s side. But at least Jaremka had seen this once before, though he had been very small. 

“Come,” Jan said gently, taking Bohun by the hand, drawing him closer. He pushed Bohun gently down to perch on the bedside.

“The baby…” Bohun faltered. _The impossibility._ How could anything be so small? How could there be another being for him to love in this world? It seemed too much for his heart to bear. 

“I have a daughter,” Helena told him. “Jan was so certain it would be another boy. And _I_ was so certain she would happen at the same pace as the others.”

She smiled down at her daughter, kissing the wispy dark hair.

“But you were in such a headlong hurry to be born, weren’t you, darling?”

Bohun stared in incomprehension at the tiny features. _So small_. It terrified him to be in the room with something so precious and fragile. He could barely breathe for fear.

Jan had settled on the bed again, long body fitted against Helena’s side. He had something of a knowing expression as he looked at Bohun’s stunned face.

“I felt the same the first time. And the second. And now too, in all honesty,” he said, offering Bohun his hand. “It never stops being…” he swallowed hard, smiling at his own folly as tears began to roll down his cheeks.

Shifting closer to comfort Jan, Bohun knew a moment of plummeting horror when the bed creaked under his weight and the baby began to stir and fuss in her mother’s arms.

He looked helplessly at Helena, trying in a glance to apologise for existing.

“It’s alright,” she said, gentle amusement quirking her lips. “I expect she’s hungry anyway. Jan, will you—?”

Helena leant forward as Jan pulled the heaped pillows behind her a little higher. With both hands on her hips, he pulled her back so she could be more nearly upright. 

They all sat in long silence as the baby fed. Her tiny fists batted against Helena’s full breast but, as the little girl suckled, they slowly unclenched. At some sign too arcane for Bohun’s understanding, Helena drew up the neck of her shift again and settled the baby against her shoulder, patting her. 

There was a tiny burp.

“That’s better, isn’t it, my little lambkins?” Helena asked the child, cradling her in her arms again.

“There,” Jan said, melting with joy. “Now both my girls are well.”

Helena hummed agreement, cooing down at her daughter. But all at once her expression of contentment changed to one of astonishment.

“Oh,” Helena whispered. Amazement gave way to delight. “Oh Jan.”

“What?” Jan asked, smiling as he caught her merriment, despite not knowing its cause.

“Look,” Helena said. She angled her arms, letting Jan look down into the infant’s face.

Jan gasped. 

Bohun couldn’t see. He was lost in breathless wonderment at the vision of warmth before him. There was something sacred about it, as though the firelight on the wall behind them were the gold background of a painted icon of the holy family. But unlike the elfen stiffness of icons, this holy family _lived_ in the soft curves of Helena’s form, in the lines of Jan’s body as he bent to her, and in the way the small bundle in Helena’s arms seemed to draw all the cosmos around her. Bohun knew he was crying again, but he didn’t care. He could only look between them, too shaken to speak.

“Oh,” Jan was saying, eyes crinkling as he gazed down at the child. “ _Oh,_ I see.”

He looked up at Bohun, biting his lip for one brief second as though he’d meant to hold back his smile. But the wild grin that broke out was almost as beautiful as the joy sparkling in Helena’s dark eyes.

Bewildered, Bohun watched them both, waiting for whatever secret knowledge they held to be revealed to him. Uninitiated as he was in these mysteries, he feared to speak.

Helena lifted up her precious burden, handing her to Jan. Jan stepped forward, still grinning. And now Helena was grinning too, despite the pallor which exhaustion had given her. She looked like nothing so much as the young girl Bohun had first loved—the one who was forever ruining her dresses in the mud of creeks and against the bark of trees.

“Make your arms into a cradle, Jurko,” Helena said, as Jan approached. 

“What?” Bohun cried, finally shocked out of silence. “No! No, I don’t know how! I’ll—”

But Jan knelt beside him on the bed and carefully lay the swaddled little figure in Bohun’s arms.

“Jan,” Bohun whispered, petrified. _“Please,_ I’ll drop her! I’ve never held a baby, Helena. Please!”

“But Jurko,” Helena said, all aglow. “Surely her father should be able to hold her.”

Bohun gazed in shock at the doll-like face that peeked pink above her blankets. Blue-green eyes looked up at him. He knew those eyes. He recognised them from the few glimpses he’d had of Helena’s fine mirror. 

“Mine?” Could he have truly had some part in the miracle he held in his arms?

He had always thought he could not love Jaremka and Longinek more had they been his own. That was still true. It was not that he now loved the boys less: that would have been impossible. The difference was that he worshipped the little girl he held in his arms with all his heart and soul. He would never be able to draw breath again in a world which did not hold her.

Bohun bowed over her, the love in his chest so vast that he gasped to find the expanse of the universe suddenly carried within his ribs.

Trying to open his mouth to speak, he found his breath had died within him and he could only look his daughter in her eyes—in _his_ eyes?—in the eyes they shared—and try to let that link between them tell her everything he needed to say.

 _I’ll never leave you,_ he told her in silent prayer _. You’ll never be alone. You will never know a moment of want_ — _not one, my little princess! Not one hour of hunger, nor of cold. I love you. I love you, my own darling girl!_

He had broken once. He must have broken, because something had been given back to him now, because it _hurt_ to be made whole all at once with so tremendous an inrush of joy. Tears tracked down his face. 

“Oh Jurko,” Helena said softly. “Come here.”

Bohun looked up at her, not knowing how he could move when he held the world in his arms.

Jan went to his rescue, kissing Bohun on the cheek and guiding him up onto the bed until he sat at Helena’s side. Bohun stared from Helena to his daughter, trying to grasp something too cosmically titanic for comprehension.

“I had wondered if we might name her Helena, if she was a girl—” Jan began. But he stopped, looking between the three of them, bashful for his past, unknowing presumption.

“We will name her Julia,” Helena said, with a satisfied smile. She leaned her head on Bohun’s shoulder, her laugh tickling the hair on his neck. “You know, I should have guessed she was yours, given the headlong way she hurried herself into the world.”

“Julechka,” Bohun whispered. How could it be that he still felt his heart beating in his chest? Surely he now held it in his arms. And what was he to do when keeping his heart locked up tight in his rib cage had never kept it safe anyhow? What was he to do now?

_Mine. God, she’s mine, not Jan’s.  
_

He slowly raised his head, searching both his lovers’ eyes with ugly misgiving uncoiling cold in his stomach. 

_Of course it won’t matter!_ he snarled to his doubts. _They love me. How could either of them ever treat her as lesser?_

But still the fear gnawed and whispered: _She’s a bastard. A bastard, daughter of an orphan, and maybe me a bastard, too. And they’re gentry._

 _But they’d never disown her!_ He was certain of it. He had to be.

Another fear, an older one, rose to take its place: _What if one day they don’t need you for their happiness?_ Now a new fear joined the old one: _How could you ever prove that she’s your daughter, if they disavow you? You would never see her again._

_No. No!_

His beloveds were smiling at him with such tenderness that all he had to do—all he’d ever needed to do—was open himself to them. They’d taught him everything he knew of love. It only remained for him to teach himself trust. 

_Look how they love her. They love you, too. They would never do such things. Believe it!_

Bohun tried. But sometimes it was so hard to believe in happiness.

He started at the touch of Helena’s fingers, light but firm along his jaw. She turned his head, forcing him to meet her gaze. 

“Jurko.” Her voice was soft. But his heart bruised at the hint of reproach in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, naked before her. “I’m sorry, I’m… I’m—”

“I know. It’s alright,” she murmured. “I know.”

She did know. Helena had always understood him. It was why she had not always loved him. Bohun could understand that. Maybe he had hated her for it, once; but oh, how he loved her for it now. She knew what it was to be angry, and to be afraid, and to struggle to forgive. It was why Bohun loved her.

Jan, watching, had that uncertain quality he sometimes had when in these moments. Bohun hurt to love Jan so much when Jan looked at him like this: a good man, trying to fathom what slunk in the depths. Jan never truly understood Bohun’s ugliness, and he never could. It was why Bohun loved him. 

“We love you,” Helena said, kissing Bohun’s cheek. “You are the father of our daughter.”

_Ours._

“Boys,” Jan said, turning to Jaremka and Longinek. “Come meet your sister, Julia.”

Bohun raised his head and beamed at them as they came bounding across the bed, swarming over Helena’s legs, coming to peer over Bohun’s shoulder. Such well-behaved boys, but as soon as they were given free rein there was no holding them back.

“Our sister?” Longinek said, glancing at his mother. 

“Mhmm.” Helena was falling asleep with a contented smile, slumping against Bohun’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Jan said. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Jaremka looked dubious, but Bohun thought he understood. The infant wasn’t beautiful, in and of herself. But her very existence was grace.

“She’s so small,” Longinek breathed. “Was I that small?”

“Yes,” Jan told him. “And your brother, too. But she’ll grow up fast. And then”—Jan flashed Bohun a grin—“I think you will have to hold very tightly to your toy sabres, boys, or your sister may steal them from you.”

“Do girls like swords?” Jaremka asked, alarmed.

“She’ll have one, if she wants one,” Bohun said softly. “She’ll have anything she wants.”

One of Helena’s hands squeezed his arm, though her eyes were drowsily shut. She squeezed hard, hard enough that he felt the weight of what was meant.

_My own dear girls. And Julechka will be as brave as her mother._

Helena nuzzled sleepily into Bohun’s shoulder. “I’d like to see anyone tell her she can’t,” she said.

She squeezed his arm again, dazzling Bohun’s poor heart with happiness

“They wouldn’t dare,” Jan agreed. Bending, Jan kissed the infant’s head. “They’d have her family to contend with otherwise. Quite a terrifying prospect.”

 _I’ll never deserve him,_ Bohun thought, pierced by gratitude so sharp it hurt to breathe. 

“Jan,” he said. “Won’t you come closer?”

Helena murmured some sort of muzzy agreement.

They leaned her back against the heaped pillows and nestled themselves around her. Bohun lay with her head tucked against his shoulder. He held baby Julia cocooned and cradled between them. Jan lay on his back, close against Helena’s side, his face turned and buried in her hair. He held Jaremka under one arm, while little Longinek sprawled across his father’s chest.

They lay together, all of them, tangled in each other. Too much bound them to one another for any to ever be alone in the world. Bohun drifted off to sleep, sure he’d never known such peace in his life.

Not long after, baby Julia woke them, howling at the injustice of being small and hungry.

Aghast, Bohun looked down into her red little face.

“And so it begins,” Jan sighed, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes. He said it the way soldiers spoke of the first shell at a siege.

“Helena,” Bohun whispered, hair standing on end. “Helena, what do I—”

“She’s a baby,” Helena said, in a sleepwalker’s voice, elucidating nothing whatsoever to Bohun. But she reached out her arms and took their daughter. Helena moved with slow certainty, sitting up and pulling down the neckline of her shift, cupping Julia’s little head. 

Bohun sat beside her as Jan gathered the boys up and ushered them out to sleep in their own room.

Not knowing what else to do, Bohun shifted over and undid the chaotic mess of Helena’s braid.

The baby fed, snorting and snuffling at Helena’s breast. Bohun slid his fingers through Helena’s hair, separating three dark ropes and twining them into order.

“Thank you, Jurko,” Helena said, sounding so tired that Bohun wondered how she was still upright. But she turned her head to kiss his cheek. She was haggard and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. There was love in her smile, though, and that was all Bohun had ever wanted.

“Somehow I never quite…” She trailed off, shutting her eyes as she tried to cudgel her thoughts into an order which could then be forced into the shape of words.

Bohun kissed her shoulder, wanting her to know he didn’t need words. He was so rich in bliss in this moment that to have even an ounce more seemed dizzying.

“I’m so glad,” Helena, each word slow and sweet with her effort. “So happy. A daughter. And she has your eyes.”

He wanted to fall on his knees and worship her. He did worship her. Every beat of Helena’s heart had been a miracle, and now— 

Helena let out a soft breath of laughter, touching his cheek.

“Yes, those eyes exactly, my Jurko.”

“They are such beautiful eyes,” Jan said, speaking from the doorway. “So beautiful that it hardly seems fair for God to have set another pair loose into the world. What havoc they will wreak.”

Helena opened her mouth to speak, but instead she yawned like a cavern.

“Does little Julia need burping? Or is she still hungry?” Jan asked, all solicitous competence. 

Bohun glanced from one to another. What ought he to do? His hands seemed to have turned to cartwheels.

“I don’t know,” Helena said. “I think she’s full. But… can you…”

“Of course.”

Jan swooped in, gathering Julia against his chest and kissing Helena as she slumped slowly back against the covers. 

Strangely bereft, Bohun sat there in uncertainty. Helena was already sinking into sleep. He turned to Jan and found his lover was standing, waiting for him.

“Jurko,” he said sardonically, “if you think I’m going to stay up to all hours burping _your_ daughter…” 

Bohun was wiping sudden tears from his eyes with the back of his hand as he rose, but he came to Jan with a grin.

“Let me show you how,” Jan said, and did.

Bohun held his daughter with her head over his shoulder, humming to her and patting her tiny back as she made soft animal noises and slobbered over his clothes.

Jan stood in silence, contemplating father and daughter.

“I love her so much,” Bohun murmured, bringing Julia down to hold curled in the crook of his arm, warm and snug as a little bird in its nest. “How am I supposed to live like this?”

“Well, at least we have something to tie you down now,” Jan said.

“To tie me down?” Bohun glanced up.

“‘Jurko Bohun, Cossack hero,’” Jan intoned, “‘serving the steppes, the whirlwinds, war, love, and his own fancy.’ That’s what the songs always said, anyhow.” He smiled, as if it were a joke. “How could we be sure you weren’t going to whirl off one day, as you do, and then…” Jan’s smile was still in place, but it hurt to see. “What if there wasn’t enough here to bring you back?”

“H-how?” Bohun stammered. “I love you both more than—”

“Oh, I know.” Jan held his smile, but he seemed to shrink into himself, though he stood so straight and tall. “I know Helena has never doubted it. You’ve always loved her. No one in the Commonwealth could doubt it. And you always wanted Helena. But I know you’re not always happy. So sometimes I worry that I’m not… I wonder if you wish there was another man who...” He drew in a deep breath, still holding that smile like a battle line. “Oh God, I’m talking such foolishness. I have to beg you’ll forget this. It’s pitiful. I’m tired, and I don’t know what I’m saying. There’s no sense in it, only foolishness.”

Bohun gaped. Even before this night, the centre of Bohun’s cosmos had always been here. That fact seemed so self-evident—as obvious as sunrise and seasons. Yet somehow Jan had not known this simple truth. 

Jan was a mystery to him, he always had been. Jan: so resolute, so certain. Young though he was, silver frosted his temples as a proof that he was of another kind of man than the common. Jan walked the path that was straight and narrow, Bohun had thought, and Jan never faltered.

“Jan,” Bohun whispered, “I couldn’t leave. I never could. Never, ever, ever! I _love_ you. Ey, I love you so much sometimes that I’m too afraid to even be here! I don’t deserve either of you and don’t you know how much it gnaws at me?”

“No; yes. Yes, I know.” Jan nodded hastily, the dreadful strain in his voice rendered more pitiable by how carefully he kept his voice low and soft. “You’ve said so, and of course I believe you. Forget what I’ve said. Forgive me, please. I’m ashamed to have spoken so. It’s a selfishness—a _meanness_ in me—very near madness. God, I’m ashamed!” 

Pity wrung Bohun’s heart. And yet a strange, glowing heat spread through his blood.

“Jan,” he breathed, “are you jealous of some… some man who doesn’t even exist?” 

Jan looked stricken. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never wanted you to know how _foolish_ I am, how _selfish_ , I—” 

“I’m glad you are,” Bohun said simply. “I want you to be.”

“You… What?” Whatever Jan had been expecting, it wasn’t that.

Bohun himself hadn’t known it in such simple terms until this moment. The revelation was as sweet to Bohun’s soul as wine. 

Bohun drew nearer, looking up into Jan’s eyes. 

“Ey, I’m not like you, Jan. What am I? A saint? No, I’m just a simple Cossack, and it used to be that I only knew love by wanting. Maybe that’s still most of my love: I want you and Helena so badly that it hurts. And maybe that’s not how _you_ want to feel. But if sometimes… if ever you’re afraid I’ll go, I want you to grab me and kiss me and hold me hard until you leave bruises on my skin.”

Jan shivered, staring at him open-mouthed.

Bohun shrugged as much as he could with his newborn daughter in his arms. And perhaps that was a strange declaration to make at this time, but Bohun had never really cared for such things. His truths fit their moments.

He leaned in close, making of their shoulders and chests a shelter for the girl child held between them.

“You’ve written your name on my soul, Jan,” he said. “I wish I knew where the soul dwells in the body. I wish I could show you. I wish I could open my chest and find it, and drag your hand inside me to run your fingers over the lines where your name is spelled out, so you’d know I’m yours.”

“God, Jurko,” Jan whispered, voice shaking. He bent his head, kissing Bohun’s brow. “God, I don’t deserve—” 

“Bullshit.”

“Jurko!” Jan hissed. “The _baby!_ ” Then he began to laugh, softly, at the ludicrousness of it. Tension melted from his shoulders and he leaned his head against Bohun’s with a sigh. “What a strange little family we are.”

Bohun didn’t care if they were strange or not.

“I love you all,” he told Jan. “So much.” He kissed Jan hard, to show him how much.

“One might have thought,” Jan gasped, “that fatherhood might mellow you… somewhat.”

“You wouldn’t like that,” Bohun pointed out.

“Perhaps not,” Jan agreed, and kissed his cheek.

“Jan?”

“Yes?”

“How long do I hold her for?”

“God, Jurko, I am glad to have two of us in the role of father. For the division of labour alone I’m surprised that there aren’t more families like ours!” Jan said shaking his head. His mischief was coming back, and Bohun wanted to kiss him again just to taste his smile. “We can lay her to sleep in her crib, and maybe we may all get some rest. She’ll want Helena to feed her every few hours, poor angel. But once the diapers begin, that joy is the rightful task of battle-hardened soldiers such as we.” 

Bohun cast him an anxious glance.

“But it’s been a long night and little Julia is still fresh to the world,” Jan said, taking pity on him. “That will be tomorrow’s problem. Come, let’s put her to bed.”

With infinite patience, Jan showed Bohun how to swaddle this newest addition to their family, and how to lay her in her crib at the bedside. When at last they’d said their prayers over her, they helped each other out of their clothes by turns, comforted by the touch of familiar fingers over skin. 

They settled on either side of Helena, moving quietly. Bohun would have been sure they hadn’t woken her, but as he lay down by her side he heard her contented sigh.

“She’s asleep?” she murmured. “All is well?”

“All is well,” Bohun said, kissing her. 

_They would speak the next day, the three of them: Helena feeding Julia, Jan cutting wedges of cheese onto dark bread for Helena to eat, and Jurko feeding them to her by hand because he wished to brush her lips with his fingers._

_Between bites, the two men who were Helena’s husbands would tell her of what they’d said as she slept. Jan would try not to look ashamed as he confessed his weakness. Bohun would hide none of his amazement that his own weaknesses had somehow been unknown to Jan. And then, still certain that this weakness must have been known to them, and feeling Jan had done more to confess more, Bohun would confess that he was glad they loved Julia. He would not say more, because the long list of reasons they might not love her would cut too sharply in his throat._

_Helena would look her loves in their eyes—autumn amber, water-hued—and confess her own fears. She had feared that Jan (“Oh my love, I know you wouldn’t, but…”) would have wanted the child to be his. She had feared that Jurko (“Forgive me, forgive me, I know you would love any child…”) would have wanted a boy._

_They would kiss each other, apologising for their fears, consoling each other, speaking the words that they had been afraid they might not hear._

_Day by day, they were still learning how to love each other. They knew how uncommon a thing it was they shared, and how precious. They did not know of any love that was like the love they shared. No example guided them. Yet this day was one more day in a life of happiness which all three, all with indomitable wills, yearned for and strove to build._

“All is well,” Bohun said again. He heard the soft wheeze of Julechka’s little breaths. He felt Helena’s hand, warm against his heart. He heard Jan—already asleep, like the soldier he was—gently snoring.

 _All is well,_ he told his heart. 

And it was.


End file.
